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Sleepy Hollow passes on decorated Marine for police force

Greg Lobato is a decorated Marine Corps captain who returned to school, earned an MBA and now works on Wall Street but that was not good enough to land him a job on the understaffed village police force.

The 35-year-old village resident is a decorated U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, leaving the service in 2007 with the rank of captain. He returned to school and earned an MBA, then landed a lucrative job on Wall Street.

But he doesn’t measure up for the Sleepy Hollow Police Department.

The village Board of Trustees voted 4-2 July 29 to pass over Lobato for one of two open slots on the police force. Critics maintain it was a political move — Lobato’s sister, Jennifer Lobato-Church, is the lone Republican on the board, and on the outs with the four-member majority voting bloc.

“I was thunderstruck,” David Schroedel, a former trustee who spoke out at the meeting, said Thursday. “You look at Greg’s résumé and you say, ‘How fast can I get this kid in here?’ I was flabbergasted that, for all the world what appears to be personal reasons, that they would choose this issue to make some sort of point.”

Lobato and Antonio Guzzo, another highly qualified village native, were up for two openings in the understaffed department. Both had high Civil Service exam scores, with Lobato ranking higher and listed 11th out of nearly 3,000 police academy candidates in Westchester County.

Although Guzzo was unanimously approved, Lobato was denied after Trustees Bruce Campbell, Karin Wompa, Evelyn Stupel and Dorothy Handelman voted against the move. Mayor Ken Wray and Trustee Glenn Rosenbloom voted to hire Lobato, with Lobato-Church abstaining to avoid any conflict of interest.

Questioned at the meeting by angry residents, the four board members declined to explain their vote, citing it as a personnel matter that they couldn’t discuss publicly.

“It was absolutely not politically motivated,” Campbell said Thursday. “People say a lot of things. They say and think all kinds of things. I would like to be able to say more but I can’t. This really is a confidential matter. All of our personnel matters are confidential. So really, I can’t comment on it.”

Lobato, Lobato-Church and Wray declined to discuss the issue.

Wompa and Stupel would not comment, and Handelman did not return a telephone call Friday.

Rosenbloom, one of the trustees who voted to hire Lobato, would only say that he thought he “was an extremely qualified candidate.”

Lobato served in the Marine Corps for six years. As a lieutenant in Iraq, he led a military police platoon, including for nearly nine months in Fallujah. He received the Marine Corps Commendation Medal with a Combat “V” device for valorous acts in the face of the enemy and the ribbon for commendatory actions during hostile engagements. He was promoted to the rank of captain when he returned from the Middle East.

Already armed with a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University, he enrolled at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York, and earned a master’s of business administration degree in 2010.

His next move — the bid to become a police officer in his hometown — is now on hold.

“Unfortunately, it’s not about the candidate for the (police department) position,” said Tom Capossela, another former village trustee who also spoke out at the July 29 meeting. “It was about several members of the board’s disdain for his sister, who happens to be a trustee and recused herself. I wish the board would put their egos aside and do what’s right for the village.”